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Fabric of Our Lives

This is an actual piece of your "blank". You slept with it for more than twenty years. When you were little, we joked that you'd probably take it to college with you, and that's just what you did!

You were not even two when you left your blank at the sitter’s house. I drove back to pick it up, and left the car running while I ran in to grab it. You were strapped into your car seat in the front (this was before the days of air bags). I turned around to see the car begin rolling slowly down the street. You’d reached over and pulled the shift handle from park to neutral. I opened the door on your side, dove across the floor, and put on the brake with my hands. For months, you told everyone that “only grownups can drive!”

You had a difficult time sharing your world when your baby brother was born. But when I caught you covering him with your blank, I knew the two of you would be okay.

When you were three, we took you and Matt on a camping trip to Teton National Park, and you threw up on your blank. We washed it out in a gas station sink and hung it out the car window to dry. That was when the edges first became tattered.

You were five when we took a family vacation with Grandma, and you left your blank in a San Francisco motel room. When we told the manager on the phone that you were unlikely to sleep until you had it back, he shipped it to us overnight at no charge!

In 2004, when my mother died, you sent me a package from Forest Grove. In it was a card that
said, “I wish I could be with you, but this is the closest I can come. Wrapped in tissue paper
was your thin, frayed blank. You couldn’t have done anything that would have touched me more.

I’ve since given it back to you, minus this little piece. Who knew, when we bought that ordinary crib blanket before you were even born, that its fabric would be part of the fabric of our lives?